A Multicriterion Approach to Setting Instream Flow Standards

This article conceptualizes the task of setting instream flow standards as a multicriterion problem, and discusses the development of the multicriterion approach into a general instream flow standard methodology. Although designed to be of general applicability, the approach is motivated by circumstances in Hawaii whose Commission on Water Resource Management has been charged with setting such standards, potentially for more than 360 perennial streams. The procedure integrates the use of value trees, interactive multiobjective programming, multiattribute assessment, and possibly voting methods.